Saying no as a moral choice in Fallen London

Fallen London
1

The following is a long-winded reflection on refusing to advance stories and how that can constitute a story choice in its own way.

This evening, I was about to embark on a significant journey to follow the Ambition: Nemesis plotline. First, I took a quick look at the wiki, checking if I needed to bring any particular items. Ordinarily I don’t do this, but it’s a long trip and I’d rather not make it twice for no good reason. Anyway, it seems that I need two Portfolios of Souls for Ambition: Nemesis 33. This puts me at something of an impasse.

My character finds the soul trade absolutely abhorrent. She does not sell souls to the Bazaar or trade them with others. Any that she acquires she returns to their original owners via the CVR, if and when that’s possible. Otherwise, she holds on to them. Perhaps someone currently unwilling to be reunited with their soul might change their mind later, after all.

I have already reached a number of storylines that I refused to advance for various reasons.

Months ago, at level 6 of &quotAn Editor of Newspapers,&quot I found that, to complete setting up my Newspaper, I needed either An Intimate of Devils or a Portfolio of Souls for devils. That quality has been sitting at 6 ever since, even though it means wasting my previous investment in the Newspaper (which, apparently, can’t have any gossip column but a devilish one). The two options for advancing it are just so completely out of character for Zareen that I can’t justify making her follow them. Or, for instance, I halted the Cheesemonger plot when it would have meant killing someone (albeit, it seems, not permanently) and I also had Zareen avoid duelling by never opening Feducci’s letter (a course of action that seems impossible now with the new Dangerous tracker).

Now it looks like I might be doing the same with the &quotmain&quot plot, her Ambition. In a way, this is a shame. Perhaps I should pay Fate to pick a different Ambition for Zareen, but maybe all the other Ambitions would require these sorts of compromises too, not just Nemesis. On reflection, my current preference is to simply leave this one unfinished with her. Maybe the decision to reach a certain point and stop is its own kind of story.

Perhaps my character does not quite fit the dark flavour of Fallen London. Indeed, I am not expecting everything to be sweetness and light (especially not in an Ambition based on revenge, which I admit I only chose as an imperfect match for my character’s family-related motivation). But, if I may be permitted so trite an aphorism, darkness and light only appear properly side by side, when they contrast. Alone, each has a blinding effect that does not allow interesting details to be seen. Thus, if there’s the possibility of Seeking Mr. Eaten’s Name, of going so far for the sake of curiosity that one destroys everything precious, there’s also the possibility of looking curiosity straight in the face and saying &quotNo,&quot of walking away from the open door instead of crossing the threshold. Those options exist side-by-side in our storytelling world and make it more interesting. I find the lack of satisfaction inherent in not-advancing to be oddly satisfying in its own way. I don’t think it goes against Fallen London’s spirit but complements it.

My initial reaction to discovering my impasse was one of disappointment. Why weren’t there more options? On reflection, though, maybe there shouldn’t always be several ways of achieving one goal. It’s often a complaint in roleplaying games that, if taking the &quotgood and pure&quot moral paths (whatever those might be, if any) can lead to an optimal outcome, it makes dark or ambiguous choices both suboptimal and senseless. Why would anyone make moral compromises if they could achieve an optimal result without doing so? If, instead, a more rewarding result can be achieved by taking a darker path, it makes it all the more meaningful to refuse such a path when the only options are &quotyes&quot or &quotno.&quot Perhaps this applies to Fallen London.

What do you think, fine citizens of the Neath?

Edit: Looks like I can’t have more than one spoiler box in a post, whoops. Rejigging the post accordingly…
edited by Zareen Bakara on 11/13/2015

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You make a thoughtful and well-reasoned point, and I definitely sympathize with your perspective. But ultimately I think this is a question of personal preference: a creator decides what range of stories to make available in a game, and the player decides if that range is congenial to them. I play as a mildly lawful character and I appreciate that generally you don’t have to betray people (but are tempted by material rewards, lore, etc.), but I don’t personally draw lines at stealing, dueling, etc.–some people do, and have said so (maybe even you! I’m terrible at remembering usernames), and while I think it would be very interesting and even creatively rewarding for, e.g., Shadowy paths that don’t involve stealing [*], if that’s not something that interests FBG, then ultimately, alas that’s just a difference of opinion that has to be lived with.

[*] One of the things I find particularly enjoyable about playing 80 Days is that with one exception that’s really required by the setting, you don’t have to be an asshole or do things you find distasteful.

That said, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to express preferences about the direction and focus of a game, without demanding that those preferences be adopted or expressing a sense of entitlement. Player responses and feedback are valid and possibly even useful, after all.

3

I had the same conundrum on the very step you previously reached an impasse in Doubt Street and for me, other associations with Devils - my connected Hell is 0 and will now remain that way as much as I can manage. I remember literally cringing and “getting it over with” though, and mentally justifying getting into any dealings with Hell due curiosity about the Iron Republic (though I think I may not return there now that I’ve gone the once). But I hate having content cut off!

I do agree that’s the one disadvantage I see about the new tracker system, as you mention - I’m personally a bit squick-ish about Fascinating (as I’m technically a happily married woman to a jewel thief!) so it was a bit… ehhhh… to back track and find I had to go seduce my own husband again :)

4

This is solely my opinion, but having played Fallen London for years with a series of very different characters, I find that on occasion I, as the player, have to make decisions that are contrary to what my character(s) would want, either because of plot limitations or my own innate curiosity. Sometimes I can handwave them away through a roleplaying storyline, essentially ‘fixing’ the sticky plot point to my satisfaction, or sometimes I pretty much have to clamp my hands over my ears and say &quotlalalalaLALALALALA&quot until I decide that didn’t really happen the way it seemed to and it will never be spoken of again.

I realize not everyone is capable of or interested in such cognitive dissonance. For some there are hard and fast rules on what they consider appropriate actions for their character and they are willing to miss out on some content if it means staying true to their vision. That’s a perfectly valid choice, particularly when the stakes are fairly low and it’s just a matter of avoiding a storylet here or there.

But to me, the Ambitions are an entirely different matter. They are long and overarching life goals for these characters. They are driven nearly to the point of obsession to bring to fruition the particular achievement of that Ambition. Along the way, each Ambition reveals terrible secrets—about the Neath, about society, about themselves—and yet they stick with it with the determination of a bulldog, even when the costs, both monetary and emotional, continue to grow with every step. I don’t think any of them are the same people they were before they took on this epic quest. To them, this is Important-with-a-capital-I.

I can’t speak to the specific details that you’ve imbued your character with or how you’re roleplaying her, but if you’re hewing fairly close to the standard Nemesis storyline,

a loved one is dead and you’re seeking revenge on their killer. To reach the point you’re at now, you’ve left the Surface behind and moved to London, hunted down and partaken of red honey which literally rips memories out of another person’s mind, successfully fought a spider-council, been grievously wounded in the Sanatorium, tracked down and bribed or threatened a number of people for information, acquired a ship, and spent a huge amount of time, effort, and money to do all this. You are at the precipice of meeting the person you’ve been told is the murderer. Next you need to sail to the Iron Republic to confront them.

Imagine yourself in Zareen’s shoes. Is her hatred of the devils and the soul trade more powerful than her desire for revenge and/or justice for her loved one? Is this truly a line in the sand she cannot cross, even with all that’s come before?

It’s entirely possible that the answer to that question is ‘yes’. If so, you (and by extension, she) will need to be satisfied with knowing there will never be a resolution to your life’s work.

One last thing I feel is worth mentioning re: the Ambitions is that no matter how seemingly simple they are on their surface, all of them get very dark indeed as they progress. While you might not reach the same particular quandary you are in with the Nemesis ambition, all of them will require some very difficult moral choices.

5

Just a quick snippet about Hell and Souls from my lore-reading:

At first I was set aback with Hell as an important but reading deeper on lore, it seems that the devils are more akin to the Fair Folk (basically the meaner and earlier version of fairies) rather than actual Judeo-Christian devils. The actual lore is even more weird but let’s just stick with Fair Folk for now.

As for souls, I’m not even sure if they’re the souls in a traditional sense since you can still live (and die) normally even without your personal one. Based on the lore that I’ve read, discussed with other people and encountered, they’re more like a personal &quotfruit&quot made up of memories from your actions and experiences.

Anyways with that out of the way, I do agree with you and the others and think that there should be a balance between flexibility and the author’s own story. Fortunately, FL is improving in the flexibility aspect. I’m not sure if older storylets can be revised but I think the newer ones, like that affair about Mr. Pages and a certain Dandy, have interesting and flexible choices between &quotgood&quot and &quotevil&quot.

6

Difficult yet unprofitable moral path are actually present in oter Ambitions - Bag a Legend can let you eiter kill an unwilling opponent or spare them (cost enough to buy a PoSI equipment) to absolutely no real consequence beyond an alternative moral path. Perhaps an alternative can be implemented for Nemesis, too.

As for newspaper, the Devils are not very bright. You can snub the two idiots back to Intimate 0 and they will still work for you.
edited by Estelle Knoht on 11/13/2015

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Usually I progress in one of the ways the game intends even if it’s not 100% what my character would do given unlimited options.

However, there are two instances in which I refused to make progress for RP reasons:

  1. I avoided being exiled from the Court. This is something against the (current) nature of my character. Even though it means I’ve never visited the Foreign Office and can’t go to Port Carnelian, I’m keeping it that way. Now, if there will be a way to regain access to the Court after exile (as you can do for the University, for example), then I’ll go through with these plot lines.

  2. (July Exceptional story spoilers)
    I’ve purposely have not made the final choice regarding July’s mirror. I’m keeping the mirror for now until my character is comfortable with either protecting the future vision/destiny or with helping July.
    edited by dov on 11/13/2015

8

I too have found myself the victim of saying no and losing out on various storylines. My character will never finish the Cheesemonger’s story due to the requirement of murdering someone seemingly out of cold blood. The same also applies to whatever ‘help’ Mr. Inch may have been able to provide her with.

My character will never perform a heist, refuses to court, let alone marry, anyone, sell her soul, and then there’s all the other forsaken Connection options.

It certainly wasn’t easy to follow these quirks at certain points of the game. But I wouldn’t have it anyway else. Ms. Davidson just wouldn’t be the same.

9

Not much to add to the above - I have a similar antipathy to Hell.

One thing though - the Beneath the Neath card does give a Portfolio as a rare success. You could, therefore, get hold of one without deliberately paying money or helping the Devils to do so.

I’m not on Nemesis, so I don’t know what the use for the Portfolios is, so the above may be moot as you might not want to hand them to a Devil anyway. But worth considering.

10

I find myself facing a similar quandary when it comes to Connected:Society, anything requiring high Persuasive, and other such qualities. Sir Richard is not a sociable fellow. He is, if anything, anti-persuasive. He keeps to himself and loathes social interaction. However, he is a pragmatist, and as such he will compromise and make exceptions when he thinks the result will make it worthwhile. In this way he can have a Connected:Society of 50 and a Persuasive of roughly 100 without truly breaking character, because he is doing these things for other reasons. He has ulterior motives. They are necessary evils, if you will - little more than distasteful stepping-stones on the path to the all-important goal of Knowing.

11

Thanks everyone for the thoughtful responses to my long ramble. :) Although I’m singling out the following for a particular response, I found all your insights very valuable.

That made me grin. :D

I do a certain amount of hand-waving myself, but it’s more in terms of reconciling Fallen London as a single-player story and as one in which players can roleplay with each other. If I’m engaging in collaborative storytelling with other players, I can’t imagine that our characters are all guest-lecturers on the Correspondence, agents of the Cheesemonger, angling to become Imperial Artist-in-Residence, etc. That would be preposterous. :) So, when I RP with others, I choose only a few of aspects of a couple of main plots, apply them partially to my character, and pretend that the others haven’t happened to her.

However, I still think of her as being the same person, whether she’s playing the main stories on her own or interacting with other player-characters. She has a baseline personality with various likes and dislikes. She has certain lines that she won’t cross. In my original post, I detailed a few of them.

Nonetheless, you raise an important point about the Ambitions:

Although I chose the Nemesis ambition, I did so mainly because none of the other three really fit. Zareen’s not a gambler, or a daring hunter, or a thief (not really). Her background is that she came down to the Neath looking for her sister who vanished. I see that as her personal Ambition. And, putting myself into her shoes as you suggest, saving her sister might actually be the one thing that could make her betray her principles, if push comes to shove. She’s not quite at that stage yet. She still believes that it’s possible to return to the Surface with the people she cares about, without doing anything so reprehensible that it would stain her soul. But perhaps something could happen that would break that resolve. It’s possible that the stage of Ambition: Nemesis requiring the assembling and trade of two Portfolios of Souls could represent that. So, if such a point comes in the story I’m RPing with a few people where she actually has to do something horrible, I’ll have that action in Ambition: Nemesis just waiting, to serve the same purpose.

For the record, as it stands, not everything you posted in the spoiler block is necessary to get the Ambition to the stage I’m at.

You don’t have to partake of Red Honey. There is the alternative to obtain and use an Uncanny Incunabulum. This was quite difficult at the level Zareen was at when she did that part of the story, but she did it. The Red Honey sits in her inventory, unused. The Chambers of the Heart remain unexplored.

Anyway, thank you for your post. It made me think a lot. When I started this topic, it was with the perspective that nothing could make Zareen take particular actions, so I’d have to accept never knowing what would happen. I was okay with that, because it felt faithful to her character. But you pointed out that, when a particular goal becomes an obsession, it can take over a person and really transform them. I shall bear that in mind and see where the story she’s RPing leads.

12

I know I am having the same problem, my character would never want to sell or trade souls and makes sure to do his best to return as many as possible to the rightful owner of said soul. Currently at over 20k to 30k souls or so.

But when it came to the news paper I went with getting close to the devils in a keep your enemy close sort of way, I also make sure to keep enough connected to hell so I can save souls. But when it came to the news paper I needed one to publish stories against the masters, because my character is an enemy to both.

Though soon, soon we shall ride on Hell and things will be different this time, things must be different.

13

I have a similar dilemma, Zareen. The Cave of the Nadir is almost certainly off-limits for DragonRidingSorceress because she refuses to have anything to do with the Revolutionary, the Missionary, or the Liberation of Night, after seeing what future they would bring to the Neath.

For a long time, I also said I wouldn’t leave Court because it was too profitable. I’ve since decided that I really should, using my final performance there to advance Ambition: Heart’s Desire - because really, going out with a bang is most definitely DragonRidingSorceress’ style, and she has grown bored of the Court.
So, as others have said, your character may change over time.

@Dante, if you have the Fate to spare, you might want to look into the Soul Trade story. There are options there which would suit your character.

14

And then you have situations like this! If my character knew then what she knows now, she wouldn’t have worked with the Firebrand and the Missionary to access the Nadir (at least, as far as single-player goes; from a RP perspective, she accessed it in a different way, albeit still with the help of a Revolutionary). But she didn’t know about the Liberation of Night at the time and thus thought that the Revolutionaries were nobly motivated (she’s not too fond of the Masters). Our growth can occur in terms of knowledge as well as other aspects, and we can come to regret actions we took before being fully informed. :( At least she hasn’t sold the Cave’s location - and I don’t intend her to ever sell it.
edited by Zareen Bakara on 11/14/2015

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[quote=dragonridingsorceress]I have a similar dilemma, Zareen. The Cave of the Nadir is almost certainly off-limits for DragonRidingSorceress because she refuses to have anything to do with the Revolutionary, the Missionary, or the Liberation of Night, after seeing what future they would bring to the Neath.

For a long time, I also said I wouldn’t leave Court because it was too profitable. I’ve since decided that I really should, using my final performance there to advance Ambition: Heart’s Desire - because really, going out with a bang is most definitely DragonRidingSorceress’ style, and she has grown bored of the Court.
So, as others have said, your character may change over time.

@Dante, if you have the Fate to spare, you might want to look into the Soul Trade story. There are options there which would suit your character.[/quote]

I am, have been for awhile, that’s why I guessed at the number of souls, I went with the 1000 soul option at least 20 times so far. So the church and police are big fans of me.

16

I made a dumb mistake years ago

Like, my character’s supposed to be kinda young (below 18) years ago back then, and the seduction storyline are on the emotional side I can handle them.

Then I had a brainfart and bought the Missing Daughter storyline, and suddenly my character get a visit from a young woman claiming to be her missing daughter despite her being still a teenager.

Which is why after my hiatus I decide to assume my character is really dim-witted

17

I was more than once annoyed with some choices in Fallen London, mainly with the &quotFascinating&quot ones. When I started, I found that I couldn’t get new storylets in Veilgarden, a location I was most interested in, due to its focus on art. I continued to increase my Persuasive, but when I got to, I think, forty-fifty, I found really odd that nothing new was coming. So I wrote a message to ask for explications.
Turns out that, in order to be an artist, I have to seduce someone. I don’t understand that at all, and, really, it annoys me : I hate the idea of secuding someone only to advance my goals, and am not interested in love. Similarly, I wanted to never use Prisonner Honey, as I didn’t like the idea of using drugs, something on which relied both the heiress and the thief.
…So, yeah, I could have been stuck out of Persuasive content for a good while, but I gave in. And now, I am at the Empress Court and they won’t let me compose a Masterpiece if I don’t have a Memento of Passion, which is annoying, as I haven’t developped any interested in love affairs nor desire to associate myself with the Barbed Tongue or the Beauty.
Similarly with Shadowy, since I don’t really want to steal nor work with the gracious widow, but you have to progress in it to become a person of some importance. Spying and learning secrets seems fine. I didn’t do the first stages of A Name Whispered in Shadows… but I am glad that they give you the option to be a modern Robin Hood. It helped me rationalize some things I have done.
Note : I am currently stealing a lot of Feducci’s Antique Mysteries, but that tomb-colonist killed me twice, since I needed to duel him to progress (another thing that I am not fond of. At least I never killed anyone permanently) and stole from the Bazaar, but it was more out of curiosity than out of malice.

The end with my message, I don’t work with the Revolutionnaries (don’t trust bomb-wielders), Hell (…do I have to explain this one ?) and Criminals. I don’t really know for the Widow, I don’t know if I will ever go to the Iron Republic as a result.

18

[quote=Tsyld]Turns out that, in order to be an artist, I have to seduce someone. I don’t understand that at all, and, really, it annoys me : I hate the idea of secuding someone only to advance my goals, and am not interested in love. Similarly, I wanted to never use Prisonner Honey, as I didn’t like the idea of using drugs, something on which relied both the heiress and the thief.
…So, yeah, I could have been stuck out of Persuasive content for a good while, but I gave in. And now, I am at the Empress Court and they won’t let me compose a Masterpiece if I don’t have a Memento of Passion, which is annoying, as I haven’t developped any interested in love affairs nor desire to associate myself with the Barbed Tongue or the Beauty. [/quote]
I’ve considered FBG’s stance on this. I can relate to their view that the game has a coherent story and can’t cater to all preferences. However, before the trackers were introduced, a person could simply advance a stat in whatever way they those, if they wanted to avoid particular storylines related to a stat. The downside to this, of course, was that it was all too easy to accidentally miss stories while levelling, particularly with the stat boost given by training professions, which is quite powerful at low levels. Either approach has its advantages and drawbacks.

Not that I expect FBG to write this - but how would you feel if romantic content remained non-optional but there was an alternate path of having to deal with an NPC being unrequitedly in love with your character? In such a case, &quotpersuasive&quot themes would remain but you wouldn’t have to roleplay your character as being romantically inclined.

19

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/features/9024-The-Accidental-Lesbian